Bread and Bread

"What is time, even" is a thing I say a lot lately, but I'm pretty sure all of these things happened since last Wednesday. In chronological order: My friend Holly found out she has a brain tumor. After a lot of radio silence on the adoption front, followed by a lot of paperwork and fees as we try to crack the silence, an expectant mom in San Diego told an attorney in Temecula that she wanted a same-sex couple from California to adopt her baby. Then she decided she wanted a same-sex male couple to adopt her baby. We met Ignacio, new baby of Alberto and Gracia, and he is small and beautiful with a lot of silky dark hair and an elfin nose.  Dash told me, "It's not fair that J&J are sisters and I don't have no one to play with. That's why I want a baby." (He also told me he has no toys.) My Grandma Jac died yesterday at the age of 91, her dog Zoe curled next to her on the bed. Roadie brought a baby sparrow into the house and it seemed like we might b...

As an oversized kitten, he chomped the hand of a friend, and we said, I'm sorry, he's still figuring out what kind of cat he wants to be.  Which is to say: he is not a metaphor any more than he's a bad omen flitting blackly across someone's path, but I must tell you this— A year ago a new cat moved in; we brought her here, I held the door  for the invading army, and she marched in On short legs, waving her tortoiseshell tail, purring and rolling for the humans,  but chasing him down like a tiger He scaled the nearest fence, a big brother witnessing the horror of an infant, and disappeared, but he never bit or clawed her. He's figured out what kind of cat he wants to be. We don't see him in the sunlight anymore, and this is my great failure, among many. My mother birthed my sister because she loved having one child so much, she thought why not two; she ruined my life and created my best friend. It only took us twenty years to retract our claws. When I say this ha...

I understand a little better this year, when the air is thick with phlegm and desperation, the impulse to look up and ask for a miracle. Urgent case in California, begins the email from the adoption agency. A woman due two days before Christmas. I picture us racing up the coast guided by starlight playing the song our son danced to  last December, parents packed shoulder to shoulder in the auditorium. He'll nod along and then he'll nod off.  His eyes look more like his birthmom's  when he's sleepy. We'll talk giddily about TV shows, high on gas station coffee. None of this comes true.  Like the Christmas story, it has been tainted  by the teller. The woman chooses  different parents for her baby. Photo by Magnus Östberg on Unsplash This year our son is obsessed with his Christmas list: night vision goggles, L.O.L. dolls, a plastic waffle maker. He has discovered the power of wishing but not, yet, its limitations, which lurk at the edge of the frame. When h...

I met Ferdinand on my third or fourth date with AK. The plan was to meet at her house and in a move that was retroactively predictable, she was running late. A thin-hipped black cat soft-pawed toward me on the fence. "You must be Ferdinand," I said, and we hung out there, outside the bungalow she shared with Alberto, and for the next fourteen years. Yesterday we said goodbye to him. For months, he'd been doing that ailing-cat move where he drank water from any vessel he could find: glasses, the pots in Dash's play kitchen, a plastic souvenir Dodgers cap. But both OC and T-Mec had long, slow declines during which they mostly lived their lives, and even when he went from his usual slender build to truly bony, I thought we'd have a while. Then all of a sudden we didn't. Big eyes, big heart Long ago, AK and I picked out careers for our cats, and Ferdinand's was DJ. He was always the coolest guy in the room. He came and went as he pleased; we ass...

We said goodbye to OC yesterday. I knew him for sixteen of his seventeen years, which is longer than I’ve known anyone else in this house. He lived with me in three places prior to this one. He was the last of the pets who knew my mom. Once, we assigned jobs to our cats. Ferdinand was a DJ and Temecula was getting her PhD in neuroscience; her dissertation was titled Why Do Some Cats Talk So Much? OC was Some Cats. His job was town crier. OC had a lot to say, and he believed that all human hands should be petting him at all times. B and I met him when, in a cage full of cats at a rescue event, he wriggled his orange nose under our extended hands. He was persistent to the point of being annoying, and endearing in his lack of guile. I could learn a thing or two from him. He was always beta to Ferdinand’s alpha, although Ferd backed off once OC got sick; I think cats know. But he was strong as a chimpanzee, as I learned the one time I tried to give him a bath, and up until a week ...

Have u seen the inflammatory New Yorker piece by Patricia Marx in which she mocks emotional support animals? my friend texted earlier this week. It is poorly argued! My friend, whom I’ll call Aileen in case her landlord is reading this, has an emotional support dog. (Not a turtle, snake, turkey, alpaca or any of the other species Patricia Marx tries to pass off as pseudo-service animals in her piece.) Aileen has a real letter, from her   actual psychiatrist, that allows Houdini to live with her in a building that doesn’t allow pets. Aileen has an actual anxiety disorder, and it’s no lie that dogs have brought her a lot of comfort throughout her life. Alpaca side-eye. That said, it’s not like Aileen would have a panic attack in CVS if she didn’t bring Houdini with her, so his ESA status is in the gray zone. Aileen is a people pleaser and would really rather not bring Houdini to places he might not be welcome. Last week we left a restaurant before ordering when Houdini’...

Tracy Kaply , today's Blog As You Are blogger, recently moved from Seattle to Joshua Tree. I'm planning to visit her there soon. I'm expecting dumplings and pie.    From what I know of Tracy, this T-shirt says something snarky. Since I have kidney failure and a panoply of other chronic/terminal illnesses trying to kill me, I don't work, and I am naturally a sedentary creature. So today I committed myself to writing down exactly what I was thinking about at each time the alarm went off. Don't worry, I am properly medicated. 8:20 am Woke up. Assessed situation. Pondered methods of killing birds right outside the window. Decided I was too old to be up this early without a damn good reason. Cat agrees, so we go back to sleep.   9:20 am Fine, I am awake. Cat simultaneously wants me to to get out of the queen size bed, because there isn't room for both of us in here, and he wants me to lay very still so he can be on me. I am starting to think ...

1. heavy objects On Tuesday I looked at my day planner and saw that I’d written “no food or water after midnight.” I was confused. I’m not having surgery until the 19 th (send good vibes that day, everyone!). Apparently I’m supposed to lay off booze and other blood thinners for a week prior—which really puts a damper on holiday cocktail parties—but food and water? Then I realized this applied to Ferdinand. I’d made an appointment for him to get his teeth cleaned as part of my long Get Shit Done While I Can Still Lift Heavy Objects to-do list. So I ruthlessly denied him the meal known around our house as Second Dinner and drove him to our beloved ghetto vet in Lincoln Heights the next morning. Ferdinand's gleaming smile. Sort of. When I picked him up, the veterinary assistant—a woman I really like, because she’s friendly and smart and quick to hand out info sheets on how to read your cat’s blood work—said, “He did great. No extractions, just a lot of tartar.” “...

Ollie takes ownership of the cube. Ahem. Hi. Well, gosh, I feel kind of bashful. When you’re internet-quiet for four months, you feel like the next thing you say should be really important , even if that was never the aim of this blog. But all of a sudden this is turning into that worst-of-all-creative-writing-products, the I Don’t Know What To Write A Poem About poem. Or its blogosphere equivalent, the Sorry I Haven’t Posted blog. I’m not sorry. I’m…rested? I actually have about a thousand things to do this week, so that doesn’t feel like the right word, even if it’s true in the mental sense. I took some time off partly because I felt like my blog was alternately disingenuous or TMI-ish, or maybe both at the same time. This morning I was wondering how to create a voice that is both authentic and not overly revealing. It would have to be some sort of experimental narrative that is always doubling back on itself and calling attention to its own tricks. And that would be no fun...

Dear T-Mec, When the rescue organization folks delivered you and OC to B’s and my apartment ten years ago, the first thing you did when they opened the door to the cat carrier was walk over to the brand new litter box and take a polite little pee. You’d been in the car for an hour and a half, and now you were in a strange new place that smelled like paint, but you knew what needed to be done. Last night you left my life just as neatly and tidily: We’d already placed a call to Vet on Wheels, thinking it might be time, but you decided to do it on your terms and save us $300. After a cuddly evening at home, we woke up to the sound of you coughing or…something. The phrase “death rattle” came to mind, and the night felt eerie. But we were there, next to you, until you were no longer there next to us. We petted you and talked to you and AK went for her bible to find a passage she remembered from Titanic (such is AK’s range of references). We let the boys in the room for a goodb...

Back in the day (sorry, Stephen—I know how you feel about that phrase) my organization shared a lovely brick building in SoHo with a fellow literary nonprofit called Poets House and the corporate headquarters of Marc Jacobs . Although my coworkers are generally snazzy dressers, it was always clear in the lobby who worked for which company. My org was a holdover from the days when SoHo was home to actual artists, not just high-end galleries. Sometime in the mid-2000s, rent crept up so high that Poets House had to leave.* Shortly thereafter, my coworkers overheard a couple of Marc Jacobs employees talking in the elevator: “One poet company down, one to go.” Within a year, my org was out of there as predicted (to very nice but unnerving digs near Ground Zero), and Marc Jacobs took over the whole building. So it was more than a little ironic when they opened up a bookstore on Bleeker Street, called Bookmarc . Now there’s one in L.A. too; AK’s friend from school works there. She’s a form...

I love our neighbor Jennifer . When I complained to her the other day that we never get any trick-or-treaters, she promised to come by with her daughter. I take all commitments very seriously, so I went into work early, left early and sat in traffic thinking, There are children who need me! I got home and threw our light-up Snoopy “Happy Halloween” thing in the window just in time to see Jennifer and Lucia coming up the sidewalk (or, more likely, they came over when they saw our light was on). Lucia was a baby carrot, although she’d gotten fussy when Jennifer tried to put her green frondy hat on, so basically she was wearing a big orange bib. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “Some carrots don’t have tops.” But I don’t think Lucia, who is two, was all that self-conscious about it. “Kitty,” she said. “Do you think we could see your cats?” Jennifer asked. I invited them in, the cats having been sequestered for the night to protect them from possible tricksters. Seriously, my aunt had this ador...

AK and I have very different relationships to illness. I have a high pain threshold but worry that every new ache or bump or freckle is a sign of a life-threatening illness. AK is not a worrier, period, but when she’s hurting, you’re gonna know about it. She would, preferably, like a battalion of friends to gather round with chicken soup anytime she coughs. This morning I had a follow-up to my 2009 boob ultrasound , which I’d been worrying about off and on for weeks. In a heroic attempt to let me get some sleep in my precarious mental state, AK threw our noisy cats out of the room at 6 a.m. On the way back to bed, she slammed her toe into the cat tree and broke it. So, as you can imagine, we were both at our best. The good news is that my boobs are cancer-free (so when some guy leaned out of his car and yelled, “Nice titties!” on my way home, I had to agree). A trip to urgent care confirmed that AK’s pinky has a spiral-shaped fracture (that is her actual x-ray on the left...

When I stayed at the classic-movie-themed Chelsea Pines Inn a couple of years ago, the hallways were lined with posters from the 1960s advertising Blackglama, which was, I gathered, a fur company. They all featured black and white photos of divas like Marlene Dietrich , Lena Horne and Raquel Welch beneath the headline What becomes a legend most? Answer: Blackglama! If you clothed yourself in a dead animal, it seemed, you went from “slightly past your prime” to “legend.” I’m all for the awesomeness of older ladies, but I’d like to think that true legendary status could come across via wool or tweed. Even leather, which, at least, is a byproduct. (West Hollywood, where I spent a sunny, fur-free day at the book fair this weekend, just outlawed fur. Good work, WeHo!) But this month’s Vogue is unapologetically full of fur, and Janet Jackson is the new face of Blackglama. Who knew it was still around? I have to admit she looks great, and this jacket is more Rhythm Nation than up...

1. pettin’ in the park The other day, Peter of Plastic Bubble World shared this blog post from a self-proclaimed “scientist turned homemaker and joyful convert to Catholicism.” Here’s the executive summary: She’s seen a little same-sex PDA at her community pool and local park, and she’s terrified, because how will she protect her children’s innocence now? What is she supposed to tell her daughter when she befriends a child with two “mommies.” (Her quotation marks probably irk me more than anything. If you care for a child, you are a parent. Period.) Oh, and she’s also not down with the fact that her tax dollars fund “contraception, abortion, and IVF” and that an undocumented immigrant killed a child while driving drunk. I know a South Park fan who got a DUI, so I’m thinking South Park fans might be a danger to society too. Also, I would like the number of whatever government department or free clinic funds IVF, because maybe I can file some paperwork and get reimbursed.* Sorry. I ...

I feel like I’m slowly emerging from my psycho funk (I’m pretty sure that’s the official DSM term for it) only to discover the world outside my fire-damaged brain is also on fire. Republicans are trying their hardest to make Obama cry . They’re taking things away from people who barely had anything to start with and convincing some of those people (I’m talking to you, Joe and Jane Tea Party) that taxes —on their nonexistent incomes—have been keeping them down. That, and the queers, feminists and immigrants, of course. America is a few years away from being a second world country . England, despite its free education and socialized health care, is still full of Angry Young Men. T-Mec is dying. It took longer than anyone predicted , another notch in the mystery that is medical science. She still has good days. She still likes to eat and purr and insinuate herself into the nearest lap. But her leg is swollen, her lumps are big and oozy and she often looks tired and glassy-eyed. It’s n...